It was easy then to simply shelve everything by label and number. I was the record librarian of a radio station in the LP days. I hate the abstraction of catalogs and numbers. I like the feeling of “hands on” I like to see and touch my records. I have always much preferred dealing with real things to dealing with catalogs and numbers-though I have an almost photographic memory for numbers and could at one time have told you the number of almost anything in the Columbia catalog. My notebook can help when a piece is filed under another composer or among collections, but as a rule I don’t need to consult anything to find a recording of anything. Thus I do not have to consult a catalog to find a recording. Collections are filed separately, as in ARG by type: orchestral, chamber, instrumental alphabetically by instrument, early, choral, and vocal alphabetically by singer. Discs with two composers or even three are filed under the composer or piece I care most about (would be most likely to be looking for). My records are all filed alphabetically by composer. When it comes to finding a piece of music, I use much the same system and it’s the system used in ARG.
Everything is done by hand, and I’ve never needed anything more. I use the same pages until they become a total mess then I redo them. So I started a loose-leaf notebook where most composers had a page or two (or more) and there were pages of the ones left over, alphabetically arranged-more or less.
I decided quite early on that there’s no sense collecting records if you don’t know what you’ve got or can’t find it when you want to hear it. Collectors always have an obsessive-compulsive streak, and I admit that I am a very organized person who wants just about everything in his life to be well organized, too.
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